Facing Up Of The Gloomy Life

It is common for us to find the rickshawmen and their life taken as a subject matter in the Neo-literature during the May 4th Movement. Anyhow, the image of the rickshawman in A Small Incident by Lu Xun is of unique characteristics.Over the past eight decades, the argument about that image had never ended so long as the story was read. The text of A Small Incident and the image of the richshawman has been interpreted, reread and commented in different historical context, according to different values and theories. There were different prevailing concepts for different periods of time, and these concepts, in turn are affecting the people in their way of interpreting the text at present time. The text itself, together with the "symbols of concept" given by the researchers and common readers, construct a "cultural field" in which we may reinterpret the text and the image of the richshawman.The academic achievements of those early researchers in the past eighty years have paved the way for us to further explore the text and the image. But at the same time, due to the restriction of time, context, point of view and study method, the political viewpoint, authoritative remarks, formulated cliche and transcendental interpretation and derogatory criticism and so on, the implication of the text is veiled somehow. As a result, the prose-like story has been either praised too high or criticized too arbitrarily.In the recent years, the research concerning the image of the richshawman has entered a period of "everyone has a say", in which the perspective, width and depths of interpretation have been expanded. Particularly, the ideas of the experts Qian Lishu and Liu Zhongshu are quite original and instructive.Enlightened by those forerunners and based on their achievements, this thesis will trace back to the origin of portraying the richshawman and make a very detailed study of the characterization of him, the background of the text and the life experience of Lu Xun. In addition, the thesis will also have a literary review of the past research done by others, focusing on the following three periods: the period from 1919 to 1949, when China was founded, the period from 1949 to 1979, thirty years after the founding of China, and the period from 1979 to 2007, namely the "new period" for China.By getting rid of the veil of the text caused by "the political viewpoint of class, authoritative remarks, formulated cliche and transcendental interpretation, and emotionalized derogatory criticism", and by tracing back to the origin of the creation of the text, this thesis will have a profound interpretation of the image of the richshawman and his destiny by relating the history, the present and the cultural space in the text in order to show the deep cultural implication of it and read the mind and psyche of Lu Xun.In A Small Incident, the richshawman knocked an old woman down by accident. What unusual about the incident is that the richshawman offered to shoulder the responsibility instead of trying to deny it, and this made "me" harrowed, ashamed and refreshed. So, when we analyze the image of the richshawman, we have to ask what would happen to the richshawaman in the end. This thesis will focus on the detail that the richshawman supported the old woman with his hand and walked toward the police station without hesitation, since it is the key to understanding the image of the character and his destiny. With various theories including text-reading, and text-receiving, close reading, archetypal criticism and analysis of images and so on, this thesis will have a creative interpretation of "filling the blanks" in the text and "doing cloze" for the text, and expound the metaphoric meaning, the abstract connotation, sentiment and cultural psychology underlying the detail.Tracing the origin of the archetype of the "police station", and relating closely the psychological experience and spiritual memory of Lu Xun concerning the "police station" and "police institution", this thesis will try to interpret Lu Xun's understanding and perception of this particular cultural image. This thesis holds that the "police station" is a signifier of "despair" and a metaphor of a tragedy of endless possibilities; that the richshawman volunteered to walk to the "police station" indicates he was taking a hopeless resistance against the miserable life and facing up to it without trying to escape from it at all.From the narrative point of view of A Small Incident, closely relating the thought, state of mind and emotion of Lu Xun and the social context, this thesis tries to interpret Lu Xun's psychological code hidden in the text. It finds out that the image of the richshawman and his fate are produced by the collision between his despair and the miserable life, the tension generated by the margin between the text and its implication. The ending of the text has much to do with the personality and introspection of Lu Xun, who aimed to expose the vulgar life full of deceit and fraud with a destructive tragedy, so he didn't give the text an "happy ending" intentionally. The intentional design coincides with the process of the change of Lu Xun's thought. In Lu Xun's opinion, that the richshawman walked persistently toward the "police station" after the accident without trying to escape or complaining about his bad luck indicated the life philosophy of "facing up to misery" and "resisting despair".This thesis compares the image of the richshawman in A Small Incident with others in modern Chinese history and Neo-literature. It makes a horizontal comparison between the richshawman portrayed by Lu Xun and others by the contemporary writers of Lu Xun, like Hu Shi and Shen Yimo as well as a vertical comparison between the richshawman portrayed by Lu Xun and others by Lu Xun's juniors, like Zhen Min, Xu Zhimo and Lao She. At the same time, it also makes a cross-cultural comparison between the richshawman portrayed by Lu Xun and those by Lu Xun's contemporary Japanese writer Kaikawa. The comparison shows that the portrayal of the image of the richshawman by Lu Xun reaches a higher level with a rich connotation and profoundness, which other writers failed to reach.In the end, this thesis deals with the value in the image of the richshawman and his destiny—pragmatic morality-orientation, consciousness of suffering, destructive tragic spirit, fearless strong will, aesthetic pursuit and their enlightenment to the present time.As an intellectual who intended to wake up the people and their consciousness of being a man during the May 4th Movement, Lu Xun was brave to face the bloody and cruel reality and miserable life. He enlightened and awakened the benighted Chinese people then with "shouts" resisting "despair" which is still thundering today.